A while ago I read about this 2006 incident: Good Samaritan vs. Parking enforcement.

In short: Good Samaritan feeds a meter. Parking enforcement dude goes ballistic and threatens legal action, which there is no legal ground for.

How important is Denver’s parking revenue?Some quick internet research shows that they hand out 600,000 tickets per year for $17-20 million per year. That's no joke.

…Excellent…So here's my idea:2-3 dudes cruising around on bicycles for an afternoon.$5 in dimes a piece.

And just imagine the impact.

There are variations. Maybe Denver bike couriers pick this up as an "Angel service", or maybe the Denver weekly cruiser ride also encourages meter feeding. With that many mobile meter feeders the City of Denver is just beat.

But I think you have to be prepared for two outcomes if this starts to succeed. 1) Pissing off Parking Dudes. They’ll probably get vocal, as they have in the past. They’ll probably threaten arrest, even if it’s an empty threat. Would be smart to have some legal protection at your back.2) If such a grass roots efforts took millions out of the city’s revenue stream, I bet there will be laws against it faster than you can say “Checks and Balances”. Perhaps the window of opportunity will close quickly.

So, I'm half serious about this. I have a bike, I have some spare time sometimes. The idea is low cost and simple to test...

DARPA I need this:

A flock of pigeons trained to attack or poop on a target that gets "painted" by a special infrared laser pointer.

I think this would actually be feasible. Let's communicate about further details.

Thanks,

GravityThread

Grr. America is a hard place to start up a small business.

Yet, every time I drive around town and see handfuls of psychic shops, dog grooming salons, and dog biscuit bakeries, it gives me hope that I will find my niche.

Heavily polarized. I'm not sure if there is a political continuum between left and right anymore. It might just be two camps at either end and a WWI style no mans land in between.Both camps benefit by eroding any middle ground to stand on. Goodbye moderation, hello hyperbole and extremism.Degenerate nature of campaigns built on attack ads plus the saturation of people's attention for politics. Does a heavy diet of spin, shclock, and deception make anyone want to be involved in their nation's political system, or be an informed voter?Political science is becoming more effective. There are specialists out there that know how to shape public opinion very effectively. Manipulating the public, the voting base, is becoming well established science. Leading to a manufactured democracy from the top down, not bottom up.Complexity of system vs. capability of voters. Modern politics and the functioning of the nation is too complex to be seen and understood by the average voter. An average person is in no position to understand the "big picture" of America and decide what moves to take. Then, by never seeing a complete picture, people are very easily manipulated by using any convenient facts that support any given argument being put forward.

So, this all just kind of leaves me in a void. I see real popular democratic control eroding, but I'm just not very sure where this system is heading.

Pop culture. Laying down the asphalt for the road of history.

Tune into the world.

That is the game. Not WoW or D&D.

The world is the game.

Every move of digital modern history has not been decided.

The history books have not yet been written.

Go out there and game.

There are two things you can count on coming across in any bus station east of Chicago:

- Amish.

- a 300 lb. black hoochie mama in tight black sweat pants.

There is no such thing as a clean bus station bathroom.

Whimsically now, I am against having philosophies.

Does that make me a Buddhist or a Nihilist?

The other day I said to my friend "I’m a connoisseur of the buses"

Take for example the errands I ran today: · Turn in piss test downtown on Broadway. · Swing by southeast Denver to Randstad offices in the Tech Center. · Visit grandparents out by Lowry, East Denver.

I did all that via buses and a little walking.

Routes used: · 28 – From home to downtown · mall ride – down The Mall to Broadway · 0 - down Broadway · F line light rail - from 1-25 Broadway to Belleview · 43 - up Quebec St from DTC. · 3 - Alameda cross-town to get back to the West side. · 16 - West Colfax from Cold Springs up to Colfax.

When I was at the grandparents in Aurora, Grandpa asked me how I got there. I told him on the bus. He started apologizing profusely. He thought I was driving, I could have just asked them to mail me the item I was picking up.

He didn’t understand that I get around this way.

I’m reminded of the character in “Even Cowgirls Get The Blues”, Sissy. She hitchhiked symphonies across the US. I bus my own little melodies across Denver.

Since college I’ve had no car. Living in Boulder was easier without a car. Then I went to Tanznaia, and I could walk across my Makete in 10 minutes. Any long range travel I did on the regional buses, just like everyone else who wasn’t a government big shot.

Now in Denver, I pay $60 for a September bus pass, and I’m golden. I don’t worry about gas, insurance or accidents, and I relax on the buses, and get work done: I read books, or work on my plans & notes. Love it.

My main complaint is that when I get done cabbing sometimes at 3am, there are no buses running to the west side. Not even the west Colfax bus runs at this hour. The East Colfax bus runs 24 hrs, but I think it’s the only one in the RTD system. What about us late night workers? Cabbies, and waitresses and drunks coming home after 2am? There is almost zero public transportation at this hour. Lame.

So, I’m left to hang out a the 24 hour diner till 5am. I count out my fares for the night, and eat a big plate of calories. Then the 16 starts running again before the sun is up. I ride down "Cold Facts" Avenue and get home around 6am to crash in bed.

Yes, I've been in Tanzania for the last two years. During that time i was chronicling my thoughts into a separate blog: grintz.blogspot.com

GR in TZ. Get it? GR are my initials.

Anyways, it seems appropriate to pick up this blog again.

So, go tell it on the mountain.

This blog is back in business!

Exery X minutes, someone is infected or dies from disease Y.

Long live the war on death!

This is an undated journal entry from around Fall 2005 that I'd like to share:

In other news, I’m on the bus, and the girl in the seat across from me is dressed up and sucking on a red lollipop.

I thought this would be a good time to write. I stink of sweat & a hockey locker room. I finished playing Broomball about an hour ago. I was a fool and didn’t shower. Now I reek. It’s annoying.

I’m heading down the turnpike to see a movie with Kelly. I haven’t seen her in a little while. Also, I think Jack is in town. I bet I will hear something about him tonight. I hope there are some good movies out. We last saw Good Luck and Good Night.

I like good cinema, but dislike bad cinema.

I like good cinema, and dislike bad cinema.

Er, I lost my train of thought. Luckily, I’m still on this bus.

And now the girl across from me has finished her red lollipop. She is wearing a white knit winter cap with a visor. She has glossy black hair and too much eye shadow on. Olive skinned, she is a latina. She is wearing a sporty black athletic jacket. For bottoms, she has capris that stop at the thickest part of her calves. Her leg is bare from there until here black platform shoes.

I am angry at her jacket because it is not helping to show off her figure. It remains hidden under the folds and blackness.

Oh. Red lipstick and pierced tongue. I wonder what she’s doing tonight.

I'm reading Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.

I'm not sure what to make of this book. Certainly HS Thompson was a ... weird dude. Into drugs. A journalistic revolutionary? I don't know. Like I said , I'm a little confused.

I've seen the movie, and I'm glad to see that the movie followed the book very closely.

It especially stayed true to HS's frantic narration, which is the best part.

As I read the book, I have to to remind myself to read it to myself in the voice of Johnny Depp with "a head full of acid".

Makes it better.

Really pulls the room together.

But, I wanted to read HS because he seems an interesting point in recent American history. Certainly controversial. And I have come to respect that. I'm intrigued. Even if it is after he has died, as always is the case with artists.

So, who was he, and what has he done for this country? In the more lucid and narrative moments of the movie and the book, he seems to be caught in the notion of a larger question "What happened in the 1960's?". This is a good question. I wasn't there, so I can only know second hand. Was it just an orgy of drugs and happy highs? Or was it a generation trying to change the world?

I guess I'm a bad person to talk about the sixties. What do I know about it? Not much. But I get the feeling that it was important. And I want to explore more.

History is interesting. I'm sure that when American high school students read of the sixties in the year 2050 they will hear a narrative that no first hand free-loving hippie would recognize.

One thing I've discovered is that a non-biased observation simply does not exist anywhere. Even in objective news coverage. Even in rational scientific experimentation.

That is certainly a problem. A big problem, a deep one.

But don't think about that. Go watch some Fox News. Go believe in something you've been told. You'll be feeling better in no time.

Ok. So maybe you think I'm crazy from that last post. I feel like I'm a little crazy myself, so that's good. We have something in common.

But, let me try to formulate this again. Not so crazy this time. Just a simple question I was thinking about the other day.

Sensory is the only thing.

Belief in a free-standing physical reality is secondary to the sensory experience that has lead you to that conclusion. This is the problem of the matrix. We could be being fed sensory information by evil robots, or Descartes' Malevolent Demon who is always tricking our perception.

Ok. So a lot of people "Believe" in "Reality". I find it hard to blame them. It seems very convenient.

But, it is from that belief in reality that one can say things like: "These sensations are only a dream", etc... But this seems a bit problematic. This is alteration/filtering of the greater (raw sensation) by the lesser (a hypothetical reality that models those sensations).

Or does the tail wag the dog?

Something I play with sometimes is the notion of letting Reality/Sensation be. Do not constrain it with anything! Just drink from your senses, without processing it with words and ideas that we like to attach to things.

Its hard to see this computer I'm typing on and not see a computer that I'm typing on.

There. Is that a better explanation?

Um, so I'm not sure how honest to be about all this. Sometimes I go places in my mind. Places. To whole landscapes of thought. I worry about going to far, and coming back and being thought of as insane. I can't be. Can I?

I guess I'll be gentle.

First, be careful how you read my words. Normally, I speak like a mathematician, and I will be ever so precise in my meaning. Like a shark with a freaking laser beam.

Sorry.

But not this time. We have to let that go.

There are little holes in reality. It looks like a pretty whole and stable entity. If you didn't take a close look, you could easily miss any of these, or maybe you've seen them, but you mind simply ignored them without telling you. But their presence is disturbing. They are holes in a box that has held us all for so long. Going outside of them is a big step. One can be safe and familiar with thing s in the box, but outside is unknown. Unknown like the darkness at night, full of wild imaginings. What if you went out a hole, and couldn't find your way back in? What if you don't exist out there?

Ok. My holes are:

Medicine: The Placebo effect.

Economics: Money.

Interesting list at first. Those things are very familiar to all of us.

But first, what is the placebo effect? Simply that people often feel better; can even physically make themselves heal if told they are taking an effective medicine when the physical medicine has no effect. Sugar pills.

A thought causing healing.

Thinking affecting reality.

I'm not sure how to proceed, so think about that for just a bit.

... anything?

The next is money. Money has such a humongous impact on our lives, that I can't even describe it. Yet, money has value only because we, people, give it value. We believe it has value.

Only then can money make the world go round.

(Tangent: Maybe some day I should go around rejecting the value of paper money. Could be interesting.)

Argh. I hate how this all sounds in words. I think I'm going to go to bed now and work on wishing myself to be a telepathic being.

Pretty soon I'll be bending bars with my will, and shooting mind beams.

Yeah... Cuz I'm a master ninja you know? And ninjas can do things like that.

Daissssyyyyyyy.......

"What is everything to you and nothing to everyone else?

Your mind baby!"

~Jim Carrey as The Riddler

If I had a time machine I would send Jim Carrey back in time to be a member of Monty Python, step back, and see what happened.

Anyways, now that random shit is out of the way I guess I had better move along to the point of this entry. I've been felling quite lonely lately. I guess I'm having trouble coming to grips with some parts of reality after my time in college. Particularly the attitude of regular people towards thinking. No, maybe that's too harsh.

I guess it's the fact that no one is interested in the same things I am. There we go. I think that's a truthful way of putting it. Which means I'm whining here, so if you have better things to be doing than reading this, break off now.

Right. So I spent four years specializing in electronics, and I particularly liked the mathematics that goes on in the analysis of them. Circuits: not so exciting. Fourier & Laplace transforms: Bitchin'. I think the trouble here is that 95%-99% of people would not have the foggiest shit of what I was talking about even if I sat down and tried very hard to explain these things to them. And it's not just the math. I don't want to assault people at the bus stop with a discussion of transforms and projections.

In my interactions out of academia since graduating it just feels like people are not willing to talk about anything that isn't a trite piece of shit idea that hasn't been pounded into them by culture or media.

Hmm, I guess this goes back to my convolution idea of minds. Start with basic observations. "Hey how's the weather?", then if you agree about basic things: water is wet, the sky is blue, talk will be in English; you can move on to other things.

Now here I encounter a problem. Image most people have worked out the baseline for where the begin convolving with each other. However, when they apply this to me, it fails. They have cast me as one type, into a mold, into which I don't fit. The assumptions present in even the most basic and congenial greeting feel like astonishing absurdities, and I am faced with the problem of tediously correcting them for even greeting me, or with going along with those ideas, letting them put me in a box and constrain me.

I realize why this protocol is necessary. To even speak to each other we need a relatively stable set of assumptions to work with in a conversation. But I think this goes too far in prose speech.

So what do I do? I don't have time to explain or correct every person who speaks to me. I don't want to it would be rude. And that's just it. If they take offense at any perturbation of those societal assumptions, then I'll just play along. But does that make me just some fawning fool seeking affirmation from people. Approval because I am like them. I really don't think I am.

So I have this problem.

I don't know what is real.

I ask the wise men, and the scientists say that what is measureable is real. I ask the philosophers and they say only the experience is real.

That sounds like a problem to me. If experience is all there is, I have to have faith that other people, or even the world itself is real.

If I believe in a physical and scientific world, I discard the value of experience. Dreams have no scientific weight. Then why are they so vivid to my mind?

I love knowledge, and to read of new things from books. But these are just ideas about a physical world that I'm not sure of. I could devote my live to hard science, but I think I might be missing something about the experience of being a human, or a whatever I am.

I guess that's about all I'm reasonably sure about. Thank you Descartes.

Cognito ergo sum.

"I think, therefore I am."

Strange fact:

I recently started using LimeWire so that I can make certain music CDs for certain people for I want to make CDs for.

I used to leave my connection on all night, so that people could freely access my great music collection. On a good night I'd have 4 songs downloaded.

I recently downloaded a little porn over LimeWire (I'm not too proud to admit such things), and as such, share that file over the Gnutella P2P network.

Now those files get downloaded every 5 minutes.

I swear my Wi-Fi card is smoldering from the traffic.

Geezus people.

1)

A sky with zeppelin clouds.

2)

A zeppelin sky of clouds. Conflagration of cotton candy.

3)

Molasses morphing ## dripping flames

of cotton candy.

...^

...Shimmering/Lucid/Luminescent

4)

The sky is a zeppelin fleet of clouds.

In rout, crashing one against the other.

Morphing & buckling, dripping flames of cotton candy.

Dreams:

For some reason my dreams have been very vivid the last few days. I try to assemble them for you.

6/27/06

A humongous ice cave full of water.

Goes down a long way.

A voice says "No one knows how far down it goes".

There is an old machine, a robot in it.

It is a fish, or a whale. Made of brass plates and covered with tiny spines.

Each spine has a light at the end.

When the fish swims, it's whole body ripples, and the lights are mezmerizing.

A tiny fish swims next to the big one.

It's this ones job to scout the cavern.

Two people in a canyon, a tidal wave comes down the canyon.

There is no were to go.

They are swept away.

It all looks like some Discovery channel computer animation.

Later:

The scouter has been working.

New locations to go to in the cave.

Select them from a list on my cell phone.

6/28/06

In a big theatre. The seating is done in large fractured slabs.

I sit in my seat and the seat starts to flop around like someamusement park ride.

Driving with a girl.

Limes like gum-drop candy.

I have to peel it.

The rind comes off eagerly, andI hold the fleshy candy fruit in my hand.

6/29/06

A girl I know. On top of me.

Some rubbing and grinding.

She's wearing blue and looks very sexy.

She tells me that we can't.

Fireworks being shot off around the side of the building.

Is it E-days?

Some are coming close.

They are out of control, and we have to dodge them and shake them off when they hit us.

In a nearby cabin:

Man telling woman she had to get rid of her crystal balls.

Christian influence; these other symbols wont be allowed.

I fly through the room and she sees me.

I nod my head. "It's OK, keep em"

Later I see her in another room.

She has hidden her collection away.

The man will not find it.

La dee da. I had Kelly, Heather, and Stacey over last night for some pool. T'was a good time. I haven't seen Heather since Kit's going away dinner. She's getting married in the summer. We talked a lot about high school. Indulging in memory.

Um, I have the whole basement of this house to myself. And I've long wanted to have huge walls to write on just like a dry erase board. Sometimes, when I'm writing, it doesn't all fit on a page. And another page won't do. I want a big page. Anyways, I have arranged this now. The living room in the basement has a large studio mirror along the whole wall of it's longest dimension. You can write on these with dry erase markers. Bingo.

It just got done hailing something fierce here. Damn.

Here's an old subject. Governments and large corporate entities are alive right? I certainly believe so. This idea of organizations of people into a conglomerate living being I call a Macronism. When you think of the American war machine over in Iraq securing oil interests, a "food" for the machine, you can imagine America to be a large scavenger that has chased other scavengers off a kill. Or maybe some other analogy to the natural world is appropriate.

Ok, but there are disturbing aspects to this Macronism theory. Consider your own body. Think of that as the highest level, the Macronism. Then think of the cells that compose your own conglomerated body. Do you want to be a cell? I kind of don't. To me, cells seem to have no freedom. They are destined at birth to a certain function. Any attempt to remove themself from the surrounding network would kill them. Certainly, your body is not designed to maximize the freedom of individual cells.

Ok, now ask the question: Who's interests come first for a real life Macronism? It is the Macronism itself, and not it's cells.

Ok, and the other interesting bit is the dynamic between humans to these Macronisms. Humans are autonomous from these Macronisms to some extent. We still have the power to walk away and let them die. (symbiosis? Parasite?) And as I see it the Macronisms have two goals: to encourage our willing participation with them, and to slowly erode our autonomy, making us truly dependent on them.

Think about that for a while.

Nothing is more perfectly enslaving than the illusion of freedom.

So, I ate the the Orpheus Cafe the other day.Quite good. Though, I don't have to recommend it; You've eaten there too.But there's a back room. You can do the cooking,and meet Orpheus himself. I got to talking with him; about business, and such.He loves cooking so much, he'd do it only if stray dogs, magpies, and maggots ate his food. But people pay to eat an Orpheus plate, they book months in advance, they regale other patrons with tales of their unique dish, and they scoff when somebody says they haven't been there.

And Orpheus is fine with making a living from it. Taking their money isn't a problem.

But he wishes they would cook for themselves.Few people do that.

I have. And my plate was awful. But Orpheus loved me for trying, and we talked about cooking, eggs, scallops, capers, salsa, and escargo, and philosophy, and physics and pots and pans.

I'm certainly going back, But I'll never sit in the diner again. I only want to cook next to Orpheus.

King without a Crown, seeking a country.

Extensive expereice.

Spent past lives as monarch of Egypt, Rome, England, and Germany.

Willing to rule country.

Seeking crown, throne and country to call home.

Highly skilled in taxation, warfare and politics.

Find me panhandling corners on the 16th st. mall, or sleeping in Civic Center park.

Days on the calendar;

Cross them off.Who made time?

Who needs time?

Time is here, happening before me.

Counting it doesn’t make it real.

Father time, let me be. 12/21/05, GcR

Curious fact we covered in my Norse Mythology class this last week.

The days of the working week are all named from Norse/Saxon gods.

Monday, Moons day -> Mona. Germamic moon god.

Tuesday - Tyr's day

Wednesday - Wotan's day

Thursday - Thor's day

Friday - Frigg's day

Saturday goes with Saturn and Sunday with the sun.

I'm kind of suprised that the christian world never replaced these names. Oh well, rock on.

I seem to have forgotten how to take a backup of my blog. If anyone knows, tell me, and I will be much appreciative. Maybe I'm even show you how appreciative.

Anyone out there know of a good place for karaoke in Denver?

I just had that sudden impulse.

Well, I've been to Perkins, and I was drinking coffee, so now that means it's time for late nite writing.

Blessed be caffeine.

Shit. Should I write about something interesting here or not? I suppose I can write about mundane crap.

I changed my mailing address today. You can do this over the internet for $1.

I went to the Wheaty Ridge Rec Center today. I was hoping to find people playing there at their drop-in volleyball hours, but I did not. So, instead I sat in the hot-tub, swam some laps and did 20 minutes on the elliptical stair tread thingy.

I saw Amelia the other day. I finished my well over at the USGS Core Research Center. I was going to catch the G bus (jebus!) back to Boulder, but I had about 2 hours to fill before it ran. So, I walked up to Colfax, Perkins and Celebrity tattoo. And, don't you know it, she was sitting out in front of the store, on her break.

We talked. I told her that I'm going to Tanzania. I think she's a little suprised that I'm going through with the Peace Corps thing. I went in and looked aroudn the store. There was a blonde gal at the counter who was quite nice to me. Amelia had to get ready for her next client so I just walked around, looking at the flash art on the wall.

I redesigned my tattoo last night. I had originally had a woman knelling over a mushroom, and holding a banner with text. The only problem here was the explicit mushroom. The meaning of the tatoo has nothing to do with psychedelic mushrooms, but I thought that I might get annoyed with people always assuming that at first glance. So, I changed it. Now it's just a woman's bare back. she has angel wings, and the text will either be tatooed on her back or written on the wings somehow. I think I'll have Amelia draw it in her anime style, because that's what she does, anime.

Mmmm, I wonder if Dana got her Antarctica job yet. I have not heard.

K, I'm gonna go browse the internet more. I may be back tonight.

Dear employer,

As you consider me for this job opening, there are just a few things I'd like you to know.

I am not a cog.

I am not a wheel.

Do not hire me expecting to behave as if I am.

Many places I have worked have put me in a cog's place. Forgive my immodesty, but It's what one must do to come across on a piece of paper. It is a waste not to utilize my full talents.

I'm good at what I do.

I saw this in my education.

I got things.

I saw the big picture, and knew how to solve problems.

I think like an engineer.

I analyze.

And I can do anything.

I may not know how to do the kind of jobs your do at you company, but no educational preparation would show me that. It did however, teach me how to learn, and how to recognize when I know something, and when I do not. So I may come to work there, and I will have to learn. But be assured that I can work for you; if you recognize who I am, and work with me.

These are the things I want at a job:

To keep on learning.

To like what I am doing.

I hope you do not feel like I'm just a cocky green newbie. Take these words seriously.

I am not a cog.

So, this is exciting. I just got an email from the Peace Corps that says my invitation letter is on its way. This means that in a few days I say yes or no to a country and departure date. Thank god/goddess/gods. Now I can finally have a meaningful answer for the main question I'm asked about Peace Corps:

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know! Argh."

::pulls hair out::

Now I don't have to do that anymore. Huzzah!

Um, what else? Eli is leaving for Alaska today. I know he'll have a great time out there. I just hope to see him before I leave for PC.

Had my Digital Filtering final. Professor Liu is crazy. He handed us a final that was 3 questions, and we all thought: "Awesome. He decided to go easy on us." Instead question 3 of this test was actually 4 questions. Group delay, filter design by impulse invariance and bi-linear transform, and his old war horse of sketching frequency spectrum of continuous and digital signals as they are filtered and up/down sampled.

Why is the bi-linear transform so named? It is non-linear, and doesn't really involve two of anything, unless you count the two domains you are mapping between. Whatever.

What practical use is up sampling a digital signal?

Norse Mythology final in 2.5 hours.

I'm sitting for my parents dogs, Rusty and Rosie this week. Yesterday Rusty was very bad. I took the two dogs plus Sierra, my roommates dog out for a walk. I took them down to the open space so I could let them run loose. You get more use out of a walk where you don't actually walk your dog the whole way. You let them run around at their leisure, which is a lot more than this biped can do. Plus with 3 of them, they had the dog-pack thing going on and they were having a great time.

At one point I had Rosie back on her leash, and Rusty and Sierra disappeared over a roll in the hill. Down below was a goat farm.

Next thing I know I see the whole flock of goats milling around in that way that livestock does when its nervous. One scatters and reforms where the other goats are. Then this part is disturbed, and reforms quickly. At the nuclei of these disturbances are Rusty and Sierra.

I ran down the hill, and was able to call Sierra off. I put a leash on her, and kept going down the hill. I was screaming at Rusty, but he was ignoring me. I figure he had just gone berserk running around in this flock of scattering animals. Must've made his predator instincts spooge. And he ignored me. So he was in trouble.

About then the shepherd flock lady comes out with her herding dogs and was trying to chase Rusty off. He ignored all that too, and kept running rampant in the flock. He wasn't really doing anything. I don't think Rusty knows how to "make a kill", he's just got the instinct that tells him to chase things like squirrels, cats, and goats apparently.

Well, I had to tie up the other two dogs, and run in to the middle of this fray and grab Rusty out. Once, extracted he was his normal self. Unfourtunately I had the sheperd lady to deal with. She of course doesn't like dogs disturbing her goats, and breaking their legs as they scatter. I had to apologize profusely, and admit to not obeying certain signs about dog leashes in this part of the open space.

I gave her my name and phone # in case there were any damges. Lets hope not. I imagine goats are more expensive than they look.

Yeah, so that was a bit of excitement yesterday.

Holy crap!

So much going on. So, there was Capstone Expo. Things went well. The project worked. Er, kind of. RAM wasn't working, exactly. But no one noticed.

Cynthia came in for Expo, and saw what I did. I guess she was kind of impressed by the ability of these groups of students to produce real projects. I certainly agree with out the applied aspect of Capstone in the cirriculum, the degree would be too analysis heavy.

I'm about to graduate. I've had my last class, and I've got three finals to go. However, I don't think I have anything to stress about for them. Norse Mythology, Digital Filters, and Discrete Math. (I prefer my math to be very in-discrete, it's more exciting that way)

Um, so that. And I'm getting ready to move down to Lakewood. I'm moving into Eli's place while he's in Alaska. I'm kind of bummed that he won't be around for the summer. When I imagine going up to the cabin, I just figure that he's there too. But no. I can't blame him though. Working in Denali Natl. Park will be freaking sweet and he'll love it.

Let's see, I'm sitting for my parents dogs while they have gone to Las Vegas with Cynthia. I can't go cuz of finals. Blargh. Having dogs is fun though. Now I have Rusty to sleep on my bed at night.

Work: So I tried to get a job doing this remote CO2 sensor network thingy. A PHD student needed to build these things for her research. I made it down to the last two candidates. I even went to her lab and interviewed with an engineer, and had him show me the layout of the system. Then I lost out because of the Peace Corps. She wanted someone who would be available after the summer. I guess that makes sense from the employer point of view, but it still sucks. Employers want people who have sacrificed freedom for job security. I don't ever want to be an employee like that. I always want to be doing something interesting. Whether or not it's pert of my "career".

Anyway, back to work. I'll be working for Penny and Dick again this summer. It's not my preference, but it works out in a lot of ways. I can bus downtown to work. It pays enough for me to get straightened out before I leave.

So, a Peace Corps "Placement Officer" called me the other day and asked if I wanted to leave July 2nd for an assignment. I wasn't expecting an offer at all, and I had to bite back the impulse to immediately accept. I told her that I wanted a fall departure. I have Eli's place till then, and I need about 3 months to get shit sorted out too.

So, after Capstone Expo, a bunch of people headed out for drinks, becuase too much engineering all semester makes one want to drink heavily. We started at the Rio and I had about 3 margs while talking with Dave Wolpoff, Mike Oberg, and my team mates. Good times. The next day I was sorry though. I went to school, under the pretense of going to my last class, but I felt terrible and just sat on the SRC couch. I had lunch with my mom that day too, but I could only eat a few bites of salad, and some baked potato. But after I got some food in my stomach I soon felt better, and proceeded onto my final Linear Systems session for the Fellows ::sniff:: Then it was time for the Fellows dinner at JKB's house. There was some awesome BBQ, and homemade ice cream. I think I will miss his hospitality.

General Notification:

I'm doing a graduation open house on May 20th, and y'all are invited. Starts at 3pm, food and drink provided. Stay as long as you want. If you need more info, you probably know how to get a hold of me.

K, that's all for tonight. Expect more posts now that I have myself back from school.